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The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

jamesclear.com

51–60 of 157 posts

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#51
post #48

We procrastinate because most of the jobs we do are completely mindless, repetitive and boring, and we have to spend so much time doing them. Good luck finding a method to fight that... Unless you're rich and the owner of your own time, in this case you don't need any "motivational" tool. Edit: lobotomy is another solution of course, using pills or any kind of drugs that massively reduce the amount of neurons in the…

Adderall is very common I think because it makes it much more tolerable to sit and do boring work.

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#52

Akrasia and Enkrateia remind me of the dual nature of humans that St. Paul describes in Romans: We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know th…

It's easy (or at least easier) to be open and honest about our faults and failures when no one is telling us we'll burn in eternal damnation for them.

That's not really a thing in Christianity, Jesus had that whole "let he without sin cast the first stone" thing or whatever it was

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#53
Douglas Andams had huge prolems with the same issue. He was once locked in a hotel suite a for two weeks by his publisher Sonny Mehta. 'It was simple. I sat at the desk and typed and Sonny sat in an armchair and glowered.'

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by" – Douglas Adams

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#54
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask the question “How can I make the company better right now?” Maybe there is some documentation that needs to be written, or some small bug you ran across the other day, etc

sorry, I meant productive for me, not for the company

Investing in skills as a developer is a great way to benefit both yourself and your company. You have a great gift -- that of "free time at work". I had lots of this in a former life as a sysadmin, and I squandered 90% of it, and I deeply regret all of those micro-decisions to surf the web instead of learning a skill.

Find problems which interest you (for me, that's currently lexers, parsers, lisp, code visualization, tools to make tools to make tools, etc), or parts of the "stack" which you never fully understood (In college we never actually went over how a C function call works, how to read stack frames, etc).

If you don't have any problems at hand to fuel your curiosity, maybe try upping the signal-to-noise ratio of your junk food -- read a programming book instead of reading HN. Small, consistent investments are more important over the long run (30 min / day for months rather than a week-long fugue state).

If books aren't your thing, find a structured series of exercises which you can work through. Project Euler is great. Make-a-lisp is great as well (github.com/kanaka/mal).

Turn what you learn into blog posts, github gists, or flash cards -- distill your knowledge into easily digestible parts so that you can catch yourself up to speed quickly 6 months from now when you need that topic again.

These won't create immediate benefit, but five years from now you will be tremendously more valuable.

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#55
post #48

We procrastinate because most of the jobs we do are completely mindless, repetitive and boring, and we have to spend so much time doing them. Good luck finding a method to fight that... Unless you're rich and the owner of your own time, in this case you don't need any "motivational" tool. Edit: lobotomy is another solution of course, using pills or any kind of drugs that massively reduce the amount of neurons in the…

Adderall is very common I think because it makes it much more tolerable to sit and do boring work.

Yes, and twitter, facebook, 24/7 news, computer games, everything we can to escape the simple fact that life, for most of us is just plain boring and meaningless.

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#56
post #48

We procrastinate because most of the jobs we do are completely mindless, repetitive and boring, and we have to spend so much time doing them. Good luck finding a method to fight that... Unless you're rich and the owner of your own time, in this case you don't need any "motivational" tool. Edit: lobotomy is another solution of course, using pills or any kind of drugs that massively reduce the amount of neurons in the…

And meaningless. Who cares about a stupid UI that 3 users are going to ever see and will be deleted at the next rewrite? To be productive, work has to be rewarding and for it to be rewarding, it has to have meaning.

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#57

Akrasia and Enkrateia remind me of the dual nature of humans that St. Paul describes in Romans: We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know th…

Amen.

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#58

Akrasia and Enkrateia remind me of the dual nature of humans that St. Paul describes in Romans: We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know th…

It's easy (or at least easier) to be open and honest about our faults and failures when no one is telling us we'll burn in eternal damnation for them.

An eternal hell fire is Greek/Roman mythology, it was only merged with Christianity because of the Roman Catholic Church. The bible never says anywhere people burn forever.

There are numerous statements about death being like sleep, and a second death being permanent and you are just gone, no torture.

One metaphorical story sort of implies one person was burning, so I think that is why people think it's from the bible.

Re: The Akrasia Effect: Why We Don’t Follow Through on What We Set Out to Do

#60
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any programmers here use pomodoro? I expect 25 minute interruptions would do more harm than good for my focus when writing code, especially the continuous expectation that I will be interrupted. I don’t have a pressing interest in finding productivity tips, just curious to hear about programmers who have tried this technique

I did use it for a while, because I had issues starting to work. It helped with that but like you said, 25m were not enough and the interruptions got quite annoying. I tried a 45m/10m work/pause ratio instead and it was a bit better, but I don't really use pomodoro anymore. It helped me to form a "habit of starting" though.

I think this is key. Used to do it, then didn't need it!
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